There are many ways of winning a match, as Laura Robson demonstrated last
night with the help of her racket frame.

Facing set point against a woman mountain named Samantha Crawford, Robson took a swing at a howitzer of a serve, and sent the ball straight up in the air - probably 50 foot up towards the top of the floodlights on Court Four.

The skier provided Crawford with a gimme smash, but the 17-year-old American - who came through qualifying to earn her first match at a Grand Slam - couldn’t put the ball away. Robson snatched the point, then reeled off the next two to take the tie-break 8-6 and the match 6-3, 7-6.

She will play Kim Clijsters in the US Open second round, after the former champion dealt with Victoria Duval - a precocious 16-year-old Haitian-American - by a 6-3, 6-1 scoreline.

The Robson-Clijsters match can expect rather higher billing than the badlands of Court Four, as Clijsters is playing the final tournament of her fine career. It could even make it onto Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Returning to Robson’s match from last night, Crawford left the court in tears, though she showed enough promise to suggest she will have plenty more outings on the women’s tour. Standing 6ft 2in tall, she wallops the ball so hard you might imagine it had insulted her. With a bit more control - both of her groundstrokes and her own emotions - she could be a real handful in the future.

The rallies in this match were mostly short and staccato, and whole games went past containing nothing but serves and the occasional thumping return. The two teenagers - who must have constituted not only the youngest match in the draw but also the tallest - walked around with faces like thunder and their shoulders up around their ears, so tense were they both.

The match was played under lights because of the thunderstorm that had held everything up earlier in the day, and the atmosphere was unusual, to say the least. Three members of the Stirling University cheer squad who usually attend Britain’s Davis Cup fixtures in Glasgow have come out to New York, and they were supporting Robson while wearing technicolour clown suits.

Then there were the fireworks that kept exploding from the top of the Arthur Ashe Stadium, startling the players in the middle of important games. It was all quite intense and nervy, but Robson just about did enough to hold off her even-younger rival.

She will need to find more of a groove if she is to trouble Clijsters in the second round, in a match that will probably be played tomorrow.